


pray for rain

by orchid_spiral



Series: age of void [2]
Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Cyborgs, Deception, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gorn, Horror, Lots of OC's, Murder, Sci-Fi, Survival Horror, Terrorism, abuse of children, graphic depictions of death, hacker!Paige, hacker!Solomon, surgical stuff, tag list prone to changes, vigilantes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-30 05:53:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3925318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid_spiral/pseuds/orchid_spiral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, there's no such thing as an easy way out, but there's a lot of ways to make someone believe that there is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the prayer/the clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are. It's been a damn long time and I'm sorry that I don't have nearly as much of this fic done as I wanted to, but eh, a little's better than nothing. Thank you all so much for reading and loving let me see the light in your eyes; I can only hope that you enjoy pray for rain as much as you did its predecessor. All questions, comments, miscellaneous ramblings, stray kittens, invitations to unicorn hunts and tickets to the grand ball can be left at indra-cal.tumblr.com. I promise I'll try to answer them seriously. (Emphasis on try. :p) If I've forgotten to tag something, please tell me so I can fix it. The title is from 'Prayers For Rain' by The Cure.

There are certain rules about committing crimes that, while unwritten, are widely accepted simply because it’s unwise to not follow them.  
  
For example, one such rule is as follows: _When driving a getaway car, keep it in the best condition you can. Try to make sure it doesn’t have broken taillights or anything that would draw official attention. Carry legitimate license plates, make sure you always have a driver’s license on you, and if it’s a fake license, then make sure you get one that was worth the money. Even if you need to go quickly, don’t speed and don’t break any laws, unless it’s absolutely unavoidable- and even then, only do what you have to, not what you_ want _to._  
  
In short, _don’t give the police any reason to pull you over._  
  
Another rule is this: _When destroying crucial evidence, take nothing for granted. Buy your supplies beforehand, never rely on the stores to be open. Choose the place carefully, and take all the time you need. No matter how remote or unknown the location, never allow yourself the luxury of believing that nobody can or will find the evidence, especially if it directly incriminates you. If you cannot destroy the evidence totally, do your best to damage it enough that it will be worthless. Don’t leave it around for just anyone to find, do your best to hide it._  
  
In short, _spare no expense or effort on destroying anything incriminating._  
  
A third rule, and the one most relevant to the situation at hand, is very simple: _when going to and leaving the scene of a crime on foot, do your best to blend in. Appear casual, do not panic, and try to avoid standing out in any way, whether it’s through your clothing or through your demeanour. Bringing extras may be essential if your chosen crime is a messy one. Give the people around you and the authorities no reason to pick you out of the crowd._

In short, _don’t stand out and give nobody a reason to suspect you._

It’s one that Paige knows very well, but it’s easy to say _don’t panic_ when you’re not the one who has a reason to.  
  
In Paige’s case, the reason is the backpack she’s wearing, the one that contains a roll of masking tape, a remote control, a detonator, some batteries and a rather large quantity of a particularly nasty, specially-made explosive, studded with long, viciously sharp nails.  
  
She’s dressed simply for the occasion, a white tank top and jeans. It’s been warm all week, and she’s done her best to seem casual, with her hair pulled into a ponytail and a baseball cap in her hand.

She’s walking down a long street in the city centre, the huge trees lining each side whispering as the wind blows softly through the leaves. The branches form a canopy over her head, like a living tunnel. It’s supposedly nearly autumn, but it sure doesn’t feel like it, and the leaves provide some welcome relief from the heat.

She doesn’t need the cap, strictly speaking. It’s getting on for early evening, the sun slowly sinking into the sky, but she pulls the cap on as she walks down the street, humming a Skid Row song as she does. People walk past her, a mix of obvious businessmen and women and people in more casual clothes, but she’s sure that the only notice they’ll take of her is because of her looks, not because she stands out.  
  
She’s forgotten how much field missions freak her out. It’s been months since she’s last been on one, and for good reason. She has to fight the invisible hand gripping her heart, the one that makes her tense up at everything, look around constantly and stare at everyone nearby, ‘cause that’s just the height of unprofessionalism.  
  
OK, it’s not just the paranoia. Adam hates it when she’s not safely under his thumb, but she insisted. She’s been sitting around for too long, doing nothing but staring at computer screens and occasionally hitting the beach. As idyllic as it sounds, it gets _fucking_ boring after a while.  
  
She’s the jewel in his crown, after all, and they all know it: Adam, Becky, Paige, Solomon, and every other one of Adam’s various employees, so when she asked, Adam knew he had to give her what she wanted, at least this once.  
  
In other matters, he’s lenient with her, very lenient. That’s why he let her out of the Bahamas in the first place, after all. He knows that he has to give her some freedom, or things can only go downhill. He’s a smart man, a real genius. He’d had to be, to turn the sign of the Rose from an innocent picture to a sign of imminent doom.  
  
And to be honest, Paige really needs the fresh air after that clusterfuck of a fight with Solomon.  
  
Thinking of Solomon, she tenses, her fists clenching, and forces herself to relax, pausing for a second. She has to remain calm. Freaking out won’t help anyone. She has a mission to complete and things to do. She needs to stay focused.  
  
Still.  
  
She keeps walking, thinking hard. Maybe it was her fault, but he’s hardly an innocent either. Maybe he needs to learn to not overreact so goddamn much. Maybe they’ve just been together for too long. Maybe they both need space and lots of it.  
  
Maybe she just missed the street she’s meant to be on. Damn.  
  
She snaps out of her reverie and swears under her breath, glaring at the side-street she should have turned onto.

 _Really professional, Paige,_ she tells herself, mentally slapping herself across the face. _Adam’s gonna be so proud. God._  
  
She turns back and starts walking.  
  
On the plus side, there’s no one else on the street, so she’s feeling considerably less nervous. On the minus side, there’s no protection from the sun’s heat here, and she soon becomes uncomfortably aware that she’ll probably get sunburn. Damn.

She pauses at the foot of the hill and sighs inwardly. It’s not a long way to go, but she’ll be walking up a steep hill under the sun.

Fuck it. If she doesn’t start, she’ll never get it done, will she?

She starts walking. The road almost instantly becomes steep, but instead of slowing, she lengthens her strides, refusing to walk slower even when the effort is making her breathe harder.  
  
By the time she reaches the top, she’s a mess, her hair working loose from its ponytail and her forehead beaded with sweat. She wipes her face on her tank top and pulls the band loose from her hair, retying it quickly.  
  
No time for anything else. She pulls her wallet out of her pocket and removes a plain white card, manufactured for the purpose. One quick touch to the panel and the doors are open.

Show time.  
  
It’s quite a nondescript building, fourteen storeys high, and despite the time of day, it’s full, every member of staff called in on urgent business.

All the rats in one place.  
  
All the members of staff have been called to a very important meeting, putting them all on the top floor. The security team are watching monitors that show nothing but what they expect to see. That gives Paige maybe twenty minutes at the most. More than enough time.  
  
The lobby’s very bland- cream and pacific blue tiles, one wall covered in mail boxes, the shiny reception desk between the elevator doors and the basement door in the right corner.

Nobody’s at the desk, of course. Solomon faked a nice little email to the receptionist’s superiors, so they’re having a long conversation with her before the meeting. They haven’t got anyone to fill in for her, but the doors are supposedly locked, so it’s not like it matters… unless one has a special card, like the one in Paige’s hand. 

Solomon’s damn good at getting through locks, both metal and electronic.

The thought of Solomon makes her stumble, and she barely manages to catch the desk in time. She manages to get up and rights herself, looking around in embarrassment even though she knows there’s nobody there.

She doesn’t go to the elevators. Instead, she moves to the basement door and slips inside, and unlike the shiny, clean lobby, the steps are cramped, narrow and dim. One wrong step could mean a broken neck.

With no handrail, she has to balance herself against the wall, taking slow, careful steps, and it’s a real relief when she finally gets to the bottom.  
  
The basement is typical: concrete and more concrete. It’s just a parking lot, full of expensive, shiny cars that probably crash if you look at them too hard.  
  
She doesn’t care about the cars. Instead, her attention is focused on one of the pillars holding the building up, a nondescript pillar in the middle of the building. A pillar which, she’s been informed, could easily bring the whole building down if anything were to happen to it- such as, for instance, a backpack full of explosives. Especially, in fact, if that backpack full of explosives was to be combined with any number of other explosive devices that were carefully placed in various spots around the building.  
  
So once Paige reaches the pillar, she pulls the batteries, remote control and masking tape out of the backpack, sets the former two down and starts ripping long strips off the roll of tape with her teeth.  
  
She’s not worried about discovery. Since Solomon fixed the cameras, nobody will know that she’s there. And nobody’s going to come to the basement, not at this time, Solomon and Adam both said so…  
  
Thinking of Solomon makes her drop the tape, and she swears, pulling another strip off the roll to replace the one now covered in basement grime.  
  
In a few minutes, she’s got the backpack taped securely to the pillar, and the batteries are safely in the remote, though it’s not on.  
  
Once she’s satisfied that she’s done everything, she steps back and turns the remote on.  
  
It’s a very simple one: it has a timer, the on/off button and a start button. That’s all it needs.  
  
Careful. She has to be careful. She refuses to fuck this up. She takes her time as she keys in ten minutes and hits the start button. She slips the remote into the backpack, zipping it up.  
  
Then she turns and runs to the door, hauling it open so hard it hits the wall with a loud _thud_. She bolts up the stairs, nearly falling more times than she’d like to count, and has to force herself to calmly walk out of the lobby.  
  
Outside, a cool breeze is blowing, and she takes a deep breath as she takes the other path along the hilltop, the breeze trying to blow her cap off.

 _Calm. Be calm, Paige._  
  
She’s several streets away when the timer hits zero: there’s a muffled roar, and she spins around, along with the few others on the street, in time to see fire explode out of every floor of the building.  
  
Perfect. All the rats are dead, and the ship can sink in peace. It’s not like any of the fuckers could claim that they didn’t know what was going on, after all. True, there’s nothing she can do for all the kids they hurt, killed and sold to people who used them and threw them away like trash, but at least she’s helped stop the bastards for good.

Job done.

Paige bites back a smile, focusing on the building as it sags, collapsing, and pauses as her phone rings loudly.  
  
She stares for a few more seconds, pretending to be numb, and then pulls it out of her pocket, fumbling to press the answer button.  
  
“Hello?” she says into it, playing the dumbfounded bystander. “Sorry, I just… this building, it just exploded out of nowhere…”  
  
“Yes, I can see it,” Adam replies, sounding pleased. “Well done, sweet pea. Come home and we’ll review what happened, all right?”  
  
“Yeah,” Paige says. “Yeah, OK, I’ll do that. Uh, bye, I guess…”  
  
She hangs up, hearing the screams of ambulances and the fire brigade, and finally turns away after a few other people on the street do the same.  
  
It’s not far to go from there: down the next street, take a right, and then back to the park.  
  
She can’t panic. Not now. She has to look normal, but she’s fully aware of how much she’s standing out: all she can hear are the screams of people and emergency vehicles, all she can see is people rushing past her toward the explosion and cars racing toward it. 

Some things will always stand out: the one person standing still when everyone else moves, the person wearing blue in a sea of red, the one runner when everyone else walks, the person moving left when everyone else runs right. Even sticking to the back streets, Paige knows she’s standing out just because of where she’s going, but hopefully no one will remember her.

 _Give them no reason to suspect you_.

She’s stabbing at shadows, that’s all. Ten minutes and she’ll be heading back to the Bahamas, and no one here will ever think of her again as anything but a vague memory.

It’s barely five minutes later when Paige turns a corner and a hand grabs her upper arm so hard she nearly screams. She turns with it and throws the hardest punch she can muster, but she barely registers her hand hitting bone when there’s a sharp sting in the side of her neck.  
  
She’s out like a light before she knows what’s happening.

 

  
  
AJ has never been more terrified in her life.  
  
She remembers them grabbing her on her way home and she remembers the sweet, cloying scent that knocked her out and she remembers waking up to the cell and she remembers the guards grabbing her and she remembers being carried away and thrown into this room.  
  
She can’t move and she can’t see and she is scared out of her goddamn mind.  
  
She can’t move because she’s seated in a metal chair, steel clamps holding every part of her in place. She can’t even turn her head.  
  
She can’t see because there are clamps holding her eyelids open and she needs to blink _so much_ , her eyes dry and sore and oh fuck it hurts, it fucking hurts, it _fucking hurts_.  
  
She’s terrified because she has no idea where she is or why she’s here or what the _fuck_ is going on.  
  
But what she does know is that the worst is yet to come.

She can’t not listen to the people around her.

They’re everywhere.

 _“-close are we?”_

_“I told the doctor, this one’s only tiny, if he wants the subject to survive then he’ll need someone bigger, but he just laughed and-”_

_“I said, why don’t we knock her out, and she said it wouldn’t work, apparently it’s all-”_

_“You got a fucking kid, how do you think the test’s gonna go? She won’t last five minutes-”_  
  
_“I’ve prepared the solution, it should-”_  
  
_“-the eyes, it’s not going to be pretty, but when_ is _it?”_  
  
Abruptly, cold hands grab her arm, and AJ lets out a cry through the gag in her mouth. All she can do is wait, every second becoming an hour, tears streaming down her face.

 _“Everybody stand back, we’re commencing the operation… give me the syringe, will you?”_  
  
AJ _fucking hates needles._ Just the thought of them makes her shiver and her skin crawl.

Maybe it’s for the best that she can’t really see.

She’s already on the edge, anticipating a sting that refuses to come, and then it does and it’s in her _eye_ and she screams through the restraints, thrashing as much as she’s able to because her fucking _eyes_ are _melting._

Then there’s more of them in her thigh, her throat, her side, her arm. She keeps screaming, and then something stabs into her, something that shoves her up against the back of the chair roughly, and she feels like she’s been punched in the chest, all the air leaving her lungs abruptly.

She’s freezing. Everywhere the needles touch is turning to ice, the cold sinking through her body, icicles stabbing through her flesh.

The world recedes, becoming a faint wash of colour at the edge of her vision, and the cold, biting pain goes with it. For a second, AJ sighs in relief, but out of nowhere, everything returns in a rush of frozen agony and sensation, hitting her like a cannonball. 

It happens again and again: one second she’s submerged in numb darkness, the next, she’s screaming in agony. Darkness, agony, darkness, agony, over and over until there’s a jolt that stabs through her soul, pinning her like a beetle on a card to her surroundings, leaving her desperately trying to breathe as her hair and clothes become soaked with sweat.

_please don’t please don’t please no stop it no more_

A single voice sounds in her ears.

 _“Get the next syringe, we’ve still got three more to go-”_  
  
AJ breaks.

 

 

_Emma runs._

_She has no idea what’s going on, but it’s not good. She has to escape, has to get away from_ them _._ They’re _chasing her, relentless in_ their _pursuit._

_She throws herself down the next corridor, takes a sharp right and nearly goes face-first into the wall. It’d be embarrassing, if she gave a damn, which she doesn’t even at the best of times._

_She has no idea where she’s going, except away from_ them _. But she doesn’t know where she is, either. Or what her options are. Or… well, anything._

_Her only hope is to find some safe place to hide in, but the corridors are all identical: grey walls, pale grey ceilings, linoleum floors and endless locked doors._

_She’s tried to open a couple of the doors, but to no avail- and she simply doesn’t have the time to try every door in the hope that one will open._ They _aren’t far behind her._

_So she keeps running, terrified and confused, but determined to not be caught._

_Behind her, footsteps sound, not close but never far away._

_They never stop._

 


	2. the rain/the storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Come at me, bitch," said the fly to the spider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, it appears that I'm back. :) Sorry for the wait, it wasn't a good month. But here I am with a brand new chapter of pray for rain. It was also something of a bitch to write, thanks to the, ahem, *unconventional* thought patterns contained within. I'd also like to apologise for being generally shitty at summaries and titles- vaguely-related slightly philosophical-sounding bullshit is usually the best I can do. But anyway, I really hope you all enjoy this chapter, and I'll try updating my other fics soon. *sends hugs and kisses*

  _"So who’s this one?”_

_“No idea, but she’s very interesting. Couldn’t find her in any of the databases, but did you see the notes made by the medical team?”_

_“Can’t say I did.”_

_“They found a microchip in the side of her neck.”_

_“A_ microchip? _What the hell?”_

 _“I know. The tech guys say they’ve never seen anything like it- it’s a tracking device, telling someone where she is. The delivery guys noticed the transmission on the way in, but they couldn’t take it out- they only shut it off,_ before _she even got into the state, before you ask.”_

_“So what is she? A criminal?”_

_“Could be, but like I said, we can’t find_ anything _on her. It’s like she doesn’t exist. Or someone wiped all records of her…”_

_“So should we use her or not? We could just dump her back where she came from and pretend it never happened…”_

_“No can do. We’ve got a bit of a pawn shortage at the moment, so we need this one. Bravo’s got a test coming up in an hour, so that’s what we’re doing with her. Anyway, it’s not going to matter- the chip’s been shut off and whoever she is, she’ll be dead in an hour. It won’t matter after tomorrow.”_

_“Do you have to be so damn depressing all the time?”_

_“I’m a realist, Immi. And you know we need to keep testing Bravo.”_

_“Yeah, but… Bryan, it’s still a little… sad.”_

_“Why the fuck do you care, Immi? They’re just pawns.”_

_“That’s it? Just pawns, to be thrown away and ignored?”_

_“That’s the job of a pawn, Immi. How long has it been since you played chess?”_

_“I could beat your ass any day, Brian.”_

_“OK, then let’s play a game. You and me.”_

_“What, now?”_

_“Oh, for… no, Immi, not_ now _. You’ve got to round up the pawns and I’m handling Bravo. But once this round’s done, let’s play chess. You can even dedicate the game to this pawn’s memory, if you care so much.”_

_“You’re such a dick, Brian.”_

_“So you don’t want to play?”_

_“No, I’ll play. And I’ll wipe the floor with you.”_

_“Oh, it’s_ on _.”_

 

  
  
  
Paige awakens.  
  
_What the… wait. This is a prison?_  
  
It sort of looks like one.  
  
Five beds, wooden boxes, a communal bathroom. Except that Paige can’t think of any prisons that have five beds to a cell.

It’s more like… like a TV prison. Like some set designer got told to make a cell and did their best, but didn’t know how a cell should work.

This is not calming.  
  
She shouldn’t have opened her eyes. Now they know she’s awake. Fuck.  
  
Still, if they know…  
  
Slowly, she sits up and takes another look around the cell.  
  
It’s empty, which… yeah, Paige can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or not. On the one hand, there’s no potential enemies. On the other hand, there’s nobody who might be able to explain what the _fuck_ is going on.  
  
_OK, Paige, think back_.  
  
She was on the mission. She successfully carried it out. She told Adam that it went fine. And then…  
  
OK.  
  
There are three explanations for this: first, this was a planned abduction by some enemy of Adam. Whether they knew who Paige was or whether they just knew she works for him is another question, but it’s for a later date.  
  
But… that doesn’t make much sense. After all, wouldn’t an enemy of Adam want to foil the mission? Why would they wait until after Paige carried it out?  
  
Unless it wasn’t about the mission. Maybe they hated the fucker too. Or maybe they just didn’t care.  
  
Except maybe… maybe this isn’t about the mission. Maybe it’s about capturing Adam’s prize asset.  
  
Maybe they somehow knew who she is, and when she’d be out of the Bahamas…  
  
Fuck. If that’s the case, then Paige is so fucked that she’s probably only got about ten minutes left before they start working her over.  
  
But then… why would they throw her in a cell meant for five people? Unless it was the only place they had? But why _five_? The number makes no sense…  
  
No. Maybe… maybe not.  
  
The second explanation is that whoever these people are, it has nothing to do with Adam. Maybe they just used the explosion as a cover. Maybe this… this… whatever the hell it is just needs bodies, and Paige getting yanked into it was just sheer dumb fucking luck.  
  
The third explanation is that these people aren’t Adam’s rivals, and they’re not some fucked-up private group. They’re law enforcement, but not the kind that gets advertised.  
  
After all, justified or not, Paige blew up a building full of people. Murder, terrorism… yeah, that’s the kind of thing that law enforcement would be after. Probably some kind of organised crime division, given that they have to know that she didn’t blow the building up on a whim.  
  
She’s got better things to do with her time, after all. Like Solomon…  
  
And on that thought, she shakes her head briskly. Nope. No time for that. She’s got to think of how she’ll get out of there.  
  
So instead of brooding, she gets up and investigates the cell.

It’s interesting. They’ve given her lots of things- extra sheets, extra clothes, toothbrushes and toothpaste- to the point that even if the cell was occupied, there’d still be lots extra. And that reinforces the idea that this is no conventional prison: in a real prison, most of this stuff wouldn’t be just available to anyone and everyone- at least, not in these amounts.

The clothes aren’t conventional either. They’re basic, just a black shirt and black pants, but definitely not prison clothes. In the cold environment of the cell, they’re not enough, and Paige goes through the crates and adds black socks, cheap white trainers, and a black jacket that she buttons up, shivering a little.

Then she goes back to checking out the cell’s structure.  
  
Five minutes later, she’s come to a conclusion she doesn’t like: even knowing everything she knows, there’s no way that she’s getting out of the cell- not without either help, a key, or preferably both.  
  
But that’s OK. All she has to do is sit tight and wait for Adam.  
_  
_ As much as it makes her bristle to think of waiting like a useless princess for her man to save her, she can’t see any other options.  
  
Besides…  
  
_“You’re one of my people now,” he’d told her five years ago. “I stand by my people. I would tear the world down to save my people.”_  
  
And she knows it’s true. She’s seen him rip cities apart and set people on fire to save his friends and employees. Adam never, ever lets anyone fuck with his people.  
  
He’ll find her. She knows he will, and it won’t be long. After all, there’s the…  
  
Her hand moves to the side of her neck, and her eyes widen with dread as she realises that there’s a small bandage there, such as might be placed over the healing wound made in the process of extracting a microchip.  
  
Oh, shit.  
  
Oh, _shit_.  
  
They know. And they’ve taken it.  
  
Not only are her chances of survival nearing zero, she’s completely on her own now, unless they… well. She doesn’t know _where_ they took it out, so there might be a chance… 

No. She can’t rely on that slim chance. She’s on her own and she’ll have to make it out herself.  
  
Fuck.  
  
_So,_ Paige thinks, _how am I getting out of here?_

She only gets five minutes to think about it before the guards arrive at her cell door.

 

  
  
AJ wakes.  
  
Her face is buried in the blankets, and it takes her a second to realise it, because she feels like her head is full of fog.  
  
She’s freezing. She puts a hand out and feels the sheets, but it takes a while for the sensation to register, because her body is so numb that she barely registers the feeling of her hand moving.  
  
She retreats under the blankets, shivering, her teeth chattering, praying that the heat will be turned up.  
  
It isn’t long before she remembers exactly where she is and how she got there, and the realisation hits her like a hammer.

AJ _freaks._

 

  
  
_“Jesus!”_  
  
_“He’s not here right now, but he’ll be back in a few minutes.”_

 _“I said_ Jesus _, not_ Jesús _, Liza.”_  
  
_“Just my little joke. Anyway, what’s the problem?”_  
  
_“This bitch screams like a banshee!”_

_“I can’t hear anything.”_

_“I’ve got it on mute.”_

_“Cut her some slack, Sam. If you woke up after_ that _, wouldn’t_ you _scream?”_

_“Yeah, but fuck, she could do it without fucking my eardrums!”_

_“Oh, for... oh. Oh, dear.”_

_“What?”_

_“Either the gauge is broken, or she’s running a fucking high fever.”_

_“I’m so surprised. Notice my surprise. I am shocked, indeed. You can see my astonishment on my face, as plain as day.”_

_“Can the bullshit, Sam. Why aren’t you surprised?”_

_“Because only a fuckwit would think that there weren’t going to be_ some _side effects. We’re just lucky that she can still function.”_

_“True. I’ll get the docs to pull her in for some tests. Well, that and the drugs must have worn off by now. If we don’t want her to blow the place up, we’d better move fast.”_

_“Good point… OK, there’s a team on the way. What do we do with her afterwards?”_  
  
_“Uh… Fay said something about trying to talk her into going along with what they want. You know, when she’s too drugged up to care.”_

 _“Makes sense, I guess. But will it work? I mean, we’re not going to have to make a countermeasure like they did over in Alpha, right?”_  
  
_“Don’t think so.”_

 _“And we’re not going to be holding a gun to her head and praying that she doesn’t realise that she’s more powerful than we are,_ right?”  
  
“ _Again, don’t think so.”_

_“Good. I’d like to live to a ripe old age, thanks.”_

_“Ah, well, wouldn't we all.”_

 

 

 

  
AJ breathes water.

 

The

 

                  _air_

 

        _is_

 

                                     **swirling**

 

like a

 

                                                                                       hurricane, wild, untamed, free of constraints.

 

_It feels so_

 

                    LOUD

 

                                       _as she_

 

**breathes again and again,**

 

                                                                                                                                                         inhaling _shattered glass_ that

 

thickens, becoming water in her lungs, and she

 

                                                                                               COUGHS

 

_and_

COUGHS AGAIN

 

and then, without _warning,_

the world

                                                     ** _solidifies._**

 

 

Her hand touches _smooth soft terrain_ , and her eyes see miles upon miles of grey _,_ and her ears hear **words and buzzing that become more words, too fast to understand.**  

None of this makes any sense.

AJ blinks slowly, and above her, the grey becomes solid and real until she belatedly realises that she’s looking at the ceiling. Under her hand, the _soft_ caresses her skin, wrapping itself around her hand, making her hum contentedly.

Her hands feel so **heavy,** like lead, and she **can’t** lift them, even with the _softness_ holding her right hand down.

She’s also not sure where her legs are, but she can’t feel them at all.

Thin trails of _red_ paint themselves over the white walls, curling and stretching over the space. They’re joined by **green** and  blue and BLACK, tiny lines that become enormous webs without a care for the rest of the wall.

AJ’s so transfixed by the colours that she doesn’t notice that she’s **moving** until she turns a hard right and winces-  
  
                                                     and the

 

                           _world_

                                                                                     falls

  
                       **apart.**

  
Pieces fly everywhere, _softness_ and **green** and  grey landing in her hair, cutting her cheek, falling on her face. She screams, tries to shield herself with her hands, but they won’t move.  
  
Blood seeps down her cheek, wells up on her collarbone, the scratch smarting, aching, _shrieking._  
  
But she doesn’t stop **moving** , even as the pieces of the world settle, leaving only grey behind.  
  
She would be afraid, but she’s not sure that she remembers how.  
  
Or, for that matter, exactly what afraid is, just that it’s bad.  
  
That is not helpful.  
  
Damn.  
  
So she closes her eyes, and tries to pretend that she doesn’t exist.

  
Existence should not be mandatory, AJ thinks. It’s unfair that she has to exist whether she wants to or not. She should get a choice. It’d be nice if people could decide if they wanted to be born or not.  
  
She can’t feel her body.  
  
It’s like she’s floating, hovering above her body, letting the _grey and green_ move through her, shards of **white** trying to sink into her, drag her back down into herself.  
  
She doesn’t want that.  
  
She doesn’t have to feel anything right now, and she wants to keep it that way.

She pulls away from it, lets its **_chaos_** leave her, and watches from above, her coherency mostly restored.  
  
Her body is motionless, still moving, but she’s tied to it somehow, hovering above it, being dragged along as it moves.  
  
Curious, she lies face down on the empty air, watching the events below.  
  
Her body is strapped to one of those… things. Tables. That move. With wheels. They have a name, she just can’t remember it. It’s moving along, escorted by six people who look like nurses. None of them are even looking at her body, and that’s just _rude_.  
  
Seriously, with everything they’ve done to her, they won’t even look at her? Bastards.  
  
Oh, they’re looking now. One of them glances at her body and does an excellent double-take, staring in shock. He grabs her shoulders, shakes her a little, and AJ feels a tug, like someone’s grabbed the rope connecting her to her body.  
  
Well, fuck that. She’s not going anywhere.  
  
Now more of the nurse-types are grabbing the body, checking its vitals, trying to wake her up, and no. She’s not going. She won’t go and they can’t make her.  
  
Her body. Her rules.  
  
The tugging is becoming more insistent, but AJ pulls away, a little scared. She doesn’t want to go. She can _think_ up here. There’s something _wrong_ with the body. She doesn’t want it any more.  
  
Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a choice.  
  
The body’s eyes open, and AJ screams, because the shattered universe around her has  reformed and it’s not pretty. It’s shards of   
  
                                                                                                                                                                                                                             red  
  
and  
  
                                                                                                                                                              green  
  
                   with some  
  
  
                                                                                              grey

 

                                                                                                                                                                                      and a little

 

         brown

 

  
all stitched together, but the [seams] are right there and she can _see_ them, flickering from  yellow to pink to silver and other colors she can’t even name in the blink of an eye.  
  
She doesn’t know what to do. She can’t move. She can’t think.  
  
It hurts.  
  
A fire ignites in the side of her neck, and it’s quickly replaced by a coolness that spreads through her, leaving her calm and quiet, unable to rem/em\ber why she was so upset in the first place.

She exhales slowly and closes her eyes.

  
When she next opens them, she feels smooth coolness, like she’s touching a tile or a wooden floor. Her hands feel impossibly heavy, but they’re only touching empty air.  
  
Welp.  
  
She slowly looks up, and blinks uncertainly when she realises that someone’s standing at the foot of the wheeled table thing, just watching her.  
  
He has such kind eyes, she thinks distantly. Warm and brown and caring. They stand out against his pale skin and light brown hair, against his solemn expression and firmly set mouth. Slowly, she takes in his white coat and professional demeanour, and relaxes. He’s a doctor. She can trust doctors. Right?  
  
“Can you hear me?” he asks.  
  
AJ manages a nod, but the movement sends ƃuᴉɥsɐɹɔ sǝʌɐʍ through her head, and for a second, her ears are so full of {s _t_ a _t_ ic} that it’s almost impossible to think.  
  
“How are you feeling?” he asks.  
  
AJ has no idea how to answer that. She slumps back against the wheeled table thing, wondering what she can possibly say.  
  
The man seems to understand. “Are you in pain?”  
  
That she can at least answer, and without thinking, she shakes her head.

Stars _ʇsɹnq_ behind her eyes, and she gasps a little, trying to move her lead hands.  
  
“Can you try saying something?” the man asks.  
  
AJ swallows, her throat dry, and nervously licks her lips. She closes her eyes, **focuses** , and manages a whisper. “Maybe?”  
  
“That’s a good start,” he says. “On a scale of one to ten, with ten being completely fine, how would you rate how you feel right now?”  
  
That takes some thought. AJ tries to focus, tries to evaluate, and finally gives up and picks a number on the right side of the scale.  
  
“Uh. Three?”  
  
“That’s not good,” he says, frowning. “What’s the worst of it?”  
  
“When I move, everything goes wrong,” AJ mumbles. It’s… shit, yeah, but it’s the best she can do to explain.  
  
“All right,” he says. “Give me a minute and I’ll see what I can come up with.”  
  
That works.  
  
She thinks she falls asleep as she waits, but she can’t tell. She knows she’s still lying down, but the world inverts itself, _spinning_ and **ʇʍᴉsʇᴉuƃ** in shades of black so deep they’re almost like worlds unto their own.  
  
In fact, it’s almost a shame when she comes back to reality and sees the doctor standing there, waiting patiently.  
  
Well, it’s more of a shame that he’s holding a fucking **syringe** , though at least he’s not holding it in a menacing way. If that even makes any **sense**.

(AJ’s not sure if **sense** means anything any more.)  
  
Still, he doesn’t need to be holding it like a weapon to scare the shit out of AJ.

It's its own catalyst: the moment she realises what she’s looking at, everything turns

                                       ǝpᴉsdn

 ** _uʍop_**  
  
                                                                                        and she’s not sure

 

what to do.  
   
She wants to close her eyes and pray that the **_NEEDLE_ ** goes away, but when she tries, it’s lurking at the edge of her mind, waiting for her to let her guard down. And the second she does, it’ll drive her insane with the pain.  
  
“Can you hear me?” he asks again, his eyes full of concern, and AJ manages another nod.  
  
“This should help,” he says, gesturing to the **syringe.**  
  
A thought lands on the edge of AJ’s mind, a tiny, persistent little thought that whispers _shouldn’t he tell you what it is?_ , but she ignores it, too terrified of the **NEEDLE.**  
  
“No,” AJ whispers.  
  
The doctor frowns, confused. “No? You said-”  
  
“No needles,” AJ says, her voice harsh on her own ears. _“Please.”_  
  
“ _Oh_ ,” he says, understanding. “All right, then.”  
  
He turns and walks away, and AJ dares to let herself relax. Maybe… maybe things might get better. Maybe she won’t have to hurt again.  
  
Maybe. Maybe not.  
  
He returns holding a small plastic cup instead of the **syringe** , and stops next to her, looking down at her, his eyes so kind. “I’d let you sit up, but I can’t. Sorry. This might be a little difficult. Just drink it slowly, all right?”  
  
She nods, and he rests the cup against her _lips_ and slowly tips it up.  
  
The liquid contained within is cool and thick, slowly spreading through AJ’s mouth, and it’s not until she’s swallowed it all that the bitter taste hits her. She gags,  disgusted, and coughs, but her stomach doesn’t even turn.  
  
“Sorry,” he says regretfully. “But that’s the only other option.”  
  
AJ forgets to respond, because she’s feeling something strange: the liquid’s both _cool_ , like a cold drink on a hot day, and **warm** , like a soft blanket wrapped around her on a winter night. All thoughts of negativity leave her mind, and she smiles a little, content. 

The fog stops _devouring_ her mind- in fact, it’s cleared a little, enough that AJ can finally focus. In its place, she feels a calmness that settles into her soul, leaving her unable to give a damn about anything, even the bitter taste in her mouth.  
  
Something touches her hand, and it takes her a second to realise that it’s his hand, his fingers gripping hers. She tightens her grip, and feels his hand squeeze hers  comfortingly.  
  
“If you’re still awake, there’s something I need to ask you,” he says.  
  
She doesn’t open her eyes, but she does respond. “Yeah?”  
  
“In a few minutes, we’re going to take you to a special place,” he says. “There will be other people there. Other women. We need your help.”  
  
“Oh?” AJ asks indifferently.  
  
“We need you to kill them for us,” he says. “Do you think you can do that?”  
  
Now that’s just silly.  
  
“How?” AJ asks, trying for ‘How could _I_ possibly do that?’ and losing most of the words.  
  
“Your hands,” he says. “How do they feel?”  
  
“Heavy,” AJ says thoughtfully.  
  
“There’s a reason for that,” he says. “There’s fire in you, waiting to be let out. We think that once you figure out how to do it, your hands will feel better.”  
  
“Tell me how,” AJ says, vaguely curious.  
  
“We don’t know,” he replies. “You need to figure it out yourself.”  
  
Hmmm.  
  
A fire, he said. AJ thinks about that, flexing her fingers, trying to lift her hand. Gravity seems to have wrapped itself around her hands, holding them down even better than the restraints.  
  
_Fire,_ AJ thinks. _Tiny wisps of smoke curling out from a flame the size of her little finger, a shield of orange around a blue core. Fire licking coals, bending around the black stones, reaching up to the chimney. Fire eating wood in the fireplace, scorching it black but still consuming it._

A hand lands on her shoulder, and she looks up, startled. “Hmmm?” 

“You zoned out,” he says, his voice like honey. “Are you OK?”

“Th… thinking,” AJ mumbles. “About fire.”

He smiles again. “Then by all means, keep going.”

 _Fire,_ AJ thinks. _An inferno of yellow-orange devouring everything before it, eating entire forests, impervious to the water thrown on it. A fire on a candle, drinking in the wax, a tiny flicker of light in the darkness. A bonfire on a beach, lighting up the waves and the sand, a beacon that beckons to people._

She’s so preoccupied by her thoughts of fire that his voice startles her. “I think that works.”  
  
She opens her eyes and blinks.  
  
Her hand is on fire, little streams dancing over her skin, wrapping around her fingers. It seems to cling to her, running over her skin instead of devouring the blankets or her clothes.  
  
Awed, she tries to lift her hand to her face, but the straps refuse to let her.  
  
“Shouldn’t it hurt?” she asks slowly.  
  
“Does it?”  
  
“Not at all.”  
  
“Good. It shouldn’t hurt. We don’t want you to get hurt,” he says.  
  
Huh.

“It’s beautiful,” she says admiringly.  
  
“I think so too,” he replies. “How does your hand feel?”  
  
“Not heavy,” AJ says happily, turning her hand this way and that.  
  
“That’s good,” he says. “Do you think you can do it now?”  
  
“Kill people,” AJ muses. “I thought…”  
  
“You thought?”

“Isn’t that wrong?” AJ says. She can’t remember. The fog is clouding her memories, making it hard for her to reach them.  
  
“Oh no,” he assures her. “Not at all.”  
  
Well, then.  
  
“I’ll try,” AJ tells him.  
  
His smile lights up her soul. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”

 

  
  
These guards are _insane_. Seriously, they look like they came out of someone’s crazy steampunk fantasy world, Paige thinks.  
  
They’re also markedly impatient, because they don’t even give her a chance to get up before they grab her and haul her out of the cell, their hands like vices on her arms.  
  
Paige tries asking what the fuck is going on, but the lack of response makes her both give up and believe that her captors are actually robots. Great.  
  
_OK, Paige, think,_ she tells herself. Four guards, one Paige. They’re all armed, she’s completely unarmed. They know where they’re going, she has no idea. They presumably know how to get out, she has no clue. And they’re holding her tightly enough that unless a miracle happens, there’s no way she can break free and run for it.  
  
Fuck. All right, she’s only got one option: wait and see.  
  
Shit.  
  
She stumbles along, half-pulled, half-carried, until they abruptly turn left and go through a huge doorway.  
  
Paige’s jaw drops.  
  
She’s _never_ seen anything like this before: everything, from the floor to the walls to the ceiling, is solid concrete. The room is circular, divided into two levels: the upper level, which, as far as Paige can see, is just a giant balcony, and the lower level, which is a giant concrete bowl full of people.  
  
What the _fuck_ is going on?  
  
The guards abruptly release her and give her a hard shove in the direction of the ladder. Paige climbs down and immediately heads to the wall, away from the others. 

Some of them turn to look at her, but her angry demeanour keeps them away, and she skulks in her little patch, mentally preparing herself for anything and everything.  
  
After a while, there’s a commotion, and Paige turns to the top of the ladder, where more people have appeared.  
  
_What the…_

 

  
  
They have to carry her to the ladder, the guards. They’re not holding her gently, but AJ doesn’t mind. She’s staring instead at the ceiling, how it swirls and vibrates, solid grey and watery silver at the same time.  
  
They point at the floor far below, and AJ understands that she’s supposed to climb down, but she can’t remember how. The cold metal under her hands is making her palms sweat, and the rungs become treacherously slippery.  
  
She tries to lower herself to the next rung and her hands come free. They strike rung after rung until she finally manages to grab one and halt her fall.  
  
For a second, she hangs by one hand, her vision reduced to a seemingly-endless scaffold of silver, and then her hand fails her and she falls, landing in a heap on the floor, scrabbling to sit up.  
  
It takes a while for the pain to hit her, and when it does she screams, clutching her left ankle. She landed on it, and now it’s nothing but a blaze of solid pain. When she looks down, she realises dimly that her foot is pointing in the wrong direction entirely.  
  
Hands fall on her shoulders, and AJ looks up, confused and exhausted and wanting nothing more than to just _get away_.  
  
There’s someone standing in front of her. A woman, a short, stocky white woman with short dark hair and calm brown eyes. She drops to one knee and starts talking, her words too fast for AJ to understand.  
  
AJ flinches away a little, raising her hands to cover her face. She doesn’t know what to expect, but she’s cold and scared and everything _hurts._  
  
Someone claps loudly, and everyone looks up, confused.  
  
AJ can barely make out the face of the kindly doctor- he’s too far away. But she can hear what he’s saying.  
  
He’s telling them all what to do. How they have to kill each other. And that only one person can get out.  
  
His words are met by screams of outrage and pleas for mercy, and the woman in front of AJ stares up at him, her eyes full of hatred, and shouts “She’s a fucking kid, you asshole! How fucked up _are you?_ ”  
  
He says nothing.  
  
AJ looks up at him, the pulsing pain in her ankle making her shake like she’s freezing, and asks plaintively, “If I kill them, can I go home?”  
  
He smiles, and AJ takes that as a yes.  
  
The woman’s head snaps up and she stares at AJ like she can’t believe what she just heard. “ _What?_ Honey, what are you talking about?”  
  
AJ blinks slowly and looks around.  
  
There’s got to be twenty or thirty of them. Big women, small women, thin women, fat women, black women, white women, all with the same look in their eyes- half desperation, half incredulity. Some stand out- a short older woman with flaming red hair; a tall young woman with long black hair and skin so pale she looks like a vampire- and others are so nondescript that AJ forgets they’re there as soon as she looks away.  
  
But apart from the fact that they’re all taller than her, they have one thing in common: AJ knows for sure that all of them, no matter how nice they seem, would kill her in a heartbeat to save themselves.  
  
Her ankle is hurting so fucking much that every pulse of pain threatens to knock her out, the fog eating her mind is threatening to return and AJ just wants to go home.  
  
So she closes her eyes and thinks about fire.  
  
_In her mind, a scarlet blaze devours a house, consuming the roof as it sends thick black smoke into the air._  
  
Flames spill from her fingers and lick the ground, spreading across the arena floor like water from a spilled bottle.  
  
The other woman’s eyes bug out and she throws herself backwards to escape, nearly falling. “I- what the _fuck?_ Honey, put that out!”  
  
_In her mind, a yellow flame so pale it’s almost white devours the wood of a campfire, reaching up to touch the bottom of the kettle suspended above it._  
  
Pain suddenly flares in AJ’s hands and her eyes shoot open.  
  
She stares down at her hands in disbelief, holding them up even as fire continues to spill from them, charring her clothes and dancing over her skin in silver-white strands.  
  
Her palms have split open, two long cuts like her skin was stretched too much to contain the force within, and what comes out is fire, a dark red fire coloured with AJ’s blood.  
  
The woman is halfway to the other side, where all the others have retreated, staring in awe and terror at AJ. “What the fuck _are_ you?”  
  
AJ stares up at her, confused, and has no answer.

( _In her mind, white fire dances over buildings, turning everything it touches to ash.)_

Instead, the fire answers for her. It surges out of her, an uncontrollable force, almost leaping across the space between them to engulf the other woman.  
  
The screams cut AJ like a knife, and she flinches away, sobbing as the pain from her hands and her ankle hits her again.  
  
_I want to go home,_ she thinks, curling up in a ball. _I want to go home, I want to go home, I want-_  
  
Before she can think anything else, more screams reach her, curses and pleas and shrieks of agony, and she opens her eyes, confused.

She can’t see the arena floor any more. All she can see is the fire. 

Waves of bright orange and yellow-white have filled the arena, obscuring everything and everyone else from sight, and one last scream rises out of the inferno, like a songbird’s last, desperate cry. 

AJ doesn’t think about the dead women. With the pain in her body and the fog seeping back into her head, there just isn’t room for them.

Instead, she looks down, a little tired, and wonders why she can’t feel anything, even though the fire has entwined itself around her body, running over her like it’s trying to eat her, but can’t.

She wants to go home.

But if she wants to go home, she’ll have to get out, and if she wants to get out, she’ll have to climb the ladder, and she can’t do that because the fire’s in the way.

But how can she put the fire out?

As if it heard her, the fire pulses, and then intensifies, reaching up almost halfway to the balcony, flashing from blue to white to orange to red to blue again in seconds.

The remaining strength leaves AJ’s body like someone flicked a switch, and she’s out like a light. Her eyes roll back in her head and she falls, cracking her head on the floor hard.

A second later, the fire’s gone, leaving no trace of its presence except the remains of twenty-nine corpses and AJ, curled up under the ladder looking for all the world like the survivor of a bomb attack.

 

  
  
  
When she wakes up, she’s on the moving table with wheels again, and the pain has been replaced by an icy numbness that makes it hard to focus.  
  
But when she looks up, she sees the face of the kindly doctor, and that’s nice.  
  
“When am I?” she asks, her voice slurring the words slightly.  
  
He pauses. “When?”

AJ nods. “When.”  
  
“Uh, it’s been a couple of hours,” he says uncertainly. “How are you feeling?”  
  
AJ pauses for a moment to give this due consideration. “Cold,” she says finally.  
  
“Are you in pain?”  
  
“No,” she says, looking down at her hands. They’ve been wrapped in bandages, and her foot has become a shapeless lump of white cloth. She can’t feel either hand or her foot, even when she tries to move them.  
  
“That’s good,” he says soothingly.  
  
“Where am I going?” AJ asks plaintively.  
  
“Back to your cell,” he replies. “You need to rest so you can get better.”  
  
“I broke my ankle,” AJ says sadly.  
  
“I know,” he replies, regretful. “I’m sorry. We need to come up with a safer way of getting people down there.”  
  
“Do I have to be in bed for months?” AJ asks. “It takes ages to heal broken bones.”  
  
He smiles and shakes his head. “Oh, no. We’ve got special ways to fix injuries. You’ll be up and around in less than a week, Subject Tango.”  
  
“Cool,” AJ says, a little confused now. “Who’s Subject Tango?”  
  
“You are.”  
  
AJ shakes her head. “That’s not my name.”  
  
“It is now,” he says firmly. “That’s the rule.”  
  
“The rule’s stupid,” AJ says, trying to break through his professional facade. “My name’s AJ, what’s yours?”  
  
A shadow comes into his eyes, and he turns away.  
  
  
  
  
The woman standing at the top of the ladder looks almost angelic: long blonde hair that Paige thinks is probably natural, pale eyes and an expression like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She descends the ladder daintily, each movement precise, and when she finally reaches the floor and turns around, she surveys Paige and the others with an expression that suggests that she’s wondering whose spine she’ll pull out first.  
  
There’s a sharp whistle that makes some of the women cover their ears, and everyone turns to the top of the ladder, where three people are standing. They’re all wearing lab coats, and Paige hates them instantly for their smug expressions. Assholes.  
  
“Ladies,” the one in the middle says. “You’re probably wondering why you’re here. Well, the answer is simple: you’re here for the purposes of science. Unfortunately, we only require one of you, so only one of you will be making it out. Anyone who tries to leave who isn’t the only one left will be shot. Now, there’s no time for questions. Begin in three, two, one…”  
  
Someone claps their hands loudly, and Paige blinks and flinches, suddenly reminded of her teenage years, of all the assholes the old man favoured, who’d use their status to push others around. This bitch with the blonde hair has the same air, that of someone who knows that they’ve been specially picked as the one above everyone else.  
  
Solomon, despite his status as the old man’s favourite, never had that air, and it’s part of why Paige fell for him.  
  
Well, that and the fact that the only time he ever used it was to get the fuckers who had her backed into a corner with their hands on her to back off.  
  
And it’s not like he didn’t warn them…  
  
_(She remembers waking up to the screams and stumbling into the bedroom, confused. She remembers the shocked crowd, the total absence of personal belongings, and the only trace left of him was the severed hand on his pillow…_

 _And most of all, she remembers the smile on Solomon’s face when he saw it.)_  
  
The memory makes her flinch again, thinking of all the ways she’s been fucked over by people like this bitch, and it leaves her thinking one thing: she will not be the loser now.  
  
Before she can think up a plan, though, the bitch jumps like a cat and lands on the side of the bowl like she’s fucking Spiderman, somehow clinging to the smooth concrete, just out of everyone else’s reach.  
  
Paige’s mouth drops open, her eyes wide, and for a second, she forgets that her chances of dying have rapidly increased.  
  
Only for a second, though, because the bitch pulls a hand away from the wall, squints clinically down at the people below, and squirts some kind of thick grey liquid into the nearest face.  
  
There’s screams and people running, and Paige freezes, watching the liquid solidify into a solid grey mass that coats the unlucky woman’s face, leaving her unable to breathe, see or smell.  
  
The woman keeps kicking and thrashing, but when she starts clawing at the- web?- her hands stick to it, and when she unwisely turns over, the web sticks to the floor, leaving her unable to move beyond kicking.  
  
Not that it would help, Paige thinks. Not against fucking Spiderwoman.  
  
Spiderwoman moves before anyone’s done staring at her first victim. She darts around the wall, pausing in between leaps to spray more web, and by the time she’s completed her first circuit, seven women are on the floor.  
  
And Paige knows what to do, now.  
  
A couple of others have had the same idea: they’ve retreated into the center of the arena, where Spiderwoman can’t reach them. She keeps moving, keeps attacking, until there’s only the few of them left.  
  
_Them or me_ , Paige thinks.  
  
She grabs the closest woman and throws her in Spiderwoman’s direction, and Spiderwoman winks at Paige and sprays enough web on her to coat the poor woman from head to toe.  
  
And now there’s only Paige and two other women left, besides Spiderbitch.  
  
Before she can react, though, someone gives her a hard shove to the back, sending her sprawling forward. She lands heavily on her hands and knees, her palms stinging from the impact, and it’s all she can do to roll out of the way as web lands on the concrete beside her. She curses herself for not keeping an eye on her back: she could have died. 

She probably _should_ have died.

But she won’t now.  
  
Despite the danger, she feels alive, awake, like she’s back kicking the arses of every wanker who insulted Solomon, given that he was always too busy working to do it himself.  
  
Well, that and Solomon never kicked anyone’s arse in person, he just ignored them until they went away. Then he dug up their secrets and spread them around so everyone knew, safe in the knowledge that reprisals would lead to bloody revenge from the old man.  
  
There’s a flurry of movement, and Spiderbitch drops to the floor. She looks down at Paige, then at the other two women, and smiles like a demon.

Paige's blood runs cold.

Spiderbitch mouths  _just a second_ to Paige and walks away, not turning back once.  _  
_

Paige gets up and watches, alert.

The other two women have retreated to the far side of the arena, and Spiderbitch calmly walks up to them and webs them both in the face.  
  
With that done, she turns around and finds that Paige is standing right behind her. Both women pause for a second, and then Paige kicks Spiderbitch in the stomach, so hard that she doubles up, wheezing. A second later, she throws up, vomit going all over the concrete and the toe of Paige’s shoe.  
  
Paige exclaims in disgust and wipes her shoe off on Spiderbitch's shirt. “Oh, fuck you! Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me?”  
  
Spiderbitch is too busy trying to breathe to reply, so Paige kicks her onto her back and brings her foot down as hard as she can, squarely onto Spiderbitch’s throat.  
  
With her windpipe crushed, she’s SOL, and Paige doesn’t have to wait long until she’s stopped breathing.  
  
Then she climbs up the ladder, expecting a bullet with every new rung, and emerges at the top to find a group of very annoyed looking scientists.  
  
One of them waves a hand dismissively. “Get her out of here,” he says. “Clean the place up and get it ready for the next test, Subject Tango will be here in an hour.”  
  
The guards haul Paige out before she can react, and all Paige can do is sigh and think _Here we go again._

  
  
_Emma hides._  
  
_The wall is just a little too long, shortening the hallway enough to be annoying, making a nice little space for Emma to hide in. She’s trying not to seem too obvious as she cranes her neck around the edge, looking for her pursuers._  
  
_They haven’t given up, seemingly always two steps behind her, and it’s all she can do to keep moving through the endless series of corridors. She’s exhausted, her legs shaking, breath short, and even though it’s increasing her chances of capture, she knows she needs a moment to catch her breath._  
  
_She just wants out. She’s tired and scared and she’s sick of running, sick of hiding, sick of this stupid goddamn waste of effort._  
  
_Footsteps abruptly sound behind her, and she hauls herself to her feet, groaning._  
  
_When she steps out from behind the wall, hands grab her arms with vice-like grips._  
  
_She gets only a glance at them, the tall grey figures with shadowed faces, before they’re hauling her down the corridors and through a door, despite her desperate attempts to get free._

_As she passes through the door, light flares, blinding her, and she screams out in pain, unable to do more than shut her eyes tightly and turn away._

_Two rooms away, the final preparations are made. Buttons are pressed, switches are flipped, and a console lies inert, banks of lights gleaming red._

_The technician takes one last look around, slides his earphones into his ears, picks up his bag and walks out. Once he has left, the room will be shut and locked, as the rules dictate, and no one will enter it for another week, maybe two, unless there is an emergency._  
  
_As he leaves, his bag swings away from him and hits the table with a_ thump _, but with the music playing, he doesn’t hear it. He takes a last glance at the room, but fails to see the crucial detail: among the banks of red lights, a single light has turned green._

_The door swings shut behind him, and the locks slide into place._


	3. the deluge/the drowning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone. I finally managed to finish this chapter at last- it took forever, and I can only hope that you all like it. Sorry for the long wait- it's been pretty up and down for a while. Thank you all for reading. :)

_“Can someone please tell me whose_ fucking _idea it was to make someone so stoned she barely knew which way is up climb down a long ladder with no assistance?”_

 _“Did_ you _have an alternative when we were looking for ideas?”_

 _“I didn’t need one, because literally_ anything _would have been better than that! Now Tango’s laid up for a week just when we had her!”_

_“That was not my fault-”_

_“Then what the fuck did you do to prevent the obvious outcome?”_

_“…fine.”_

_“You’d better fix this. And I don’t mean Tango’s ankle. Come up with something safer,_ now _.”_

_“All right, all right. I get it.”_

_“One more mistake…”_

_“I fucking_ get it! _”_

 

  
  
It’s just like the good old days, Paige thinks. The good old days when she had to beat people up just to get to school, or to the kitchen, or to class on time, or to her office. The most wonderful kind of anarchy, when people just fuck other people up because there’s no rules. Joy.  
  
Admittedly, it was kind of fun when it started, but what allure there was at the start quickly wore off. Still, at least they’re backing off now. She had to break a few heads to get the message across, true, but it’s nothing she hasn’t done before. Only a few days in wherever the fuck this is and she’s reverting back to her old self, and while it’d be easy to argue that the current setting demands it, Paige knows she’d prefer to leave it far, far behind her. Unfortunately, it appears that she isn’t going to be given that option.

Great.  
  
What’s interesting, though is the lack of official response. Sure, the guards show up occasionally to break up the fights, but there’s no reprisals: instead, they just haul Paige out and throw her into another cell. Rinse, repeat, nothing changes.  
  
Eventually, they must have got sick of it, Paige thinks, because now she’s stuck in an empty cell with fuck all to do.  
  
But that raises an interesting question: _why_ no reprisals? Sure, she didn’t kill anyone, but if they’re keeping all these people around to throw them at the superfreaks, then why aren’t they pissed off at her for fucking them up? Unless they just want warm bodies and it doesn’t matter how healthy they are…  
  
Or maybe it has something to do with her killing Spiderbitch. Maybe that earned her a little grace. Even though, logically speaking, they should be _really_ pissed at her for that one.  
  
Fuck it. It’s not like wondering’s going to do her a damn bit of good, so Paige flops down on her bed and starts whistling loudly.  
  
Fuck, she’s bored.

 

  
  
_“I’m telling you, Tango’s gonna be our ticket to success. All we need to do-”_  
  
_“You’re asking me to break the rules in favour of a subject who’s spent the past three days curled up in a ball and_ giggling? _I’ve had to fucking_ feed _her-”_

 _“OK, first, that’s not her fault and you know it. Second, she’s nearly healed. Give her another day-”_  
  
_“Again: we’re still breaking the established rules.”_

_“Yes. We’re breaking them on behalf of a subject who’s a special case. How many other subjects are kept so high they don’t know where they are?”_

_“…you have a point.”_

_“See?”_

_“Yes. But that’s the only reason, right?”_

_“Huh?”_

_“This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Tango is tiny, cute and completely helpless?”_

_“Liza. Are you accusing me of being attracted to a subject to the point that I’m breaking the rules for her?"_

_“Yes. Are you?”_

_“No!”_

_“Good. We already had that case where Mark- you remember Mark?”_

_“Tall, blond hair, bit of a moron?”_

_“That’s him. The idiot decided he’d have a go at screwing Kilo.”_

_“Wait, you mean he…”_  
  
_“Actually, no. She flirted with him, made him think he had a chance, then she broke his arms, stole his keys and tried to escape.”_

 _“_ Shit. _What happened to him?”_

_“Oh, he got sent over to Alpha as one of their red shirts.”_

_“Their what?”_

_“Red shirts. Don’t you watch Star Trek?”_

_“No?”_

_“Their pawns.”_

_“Oh… wait,_ what? _”_

_“Look, anyone stupid enough to try fucking a subject deserved what he got.”_

_“So what happened to_ her _?”_

_“Got lost and the guards shot her. Damn shame, too, she was a really good one.”_

_“Oh.”_

  
  
  
Well, Paige isn’t bored any more. In fact, she’s almost having fun.  
  
Admittedly, it’s mostly because she’s much, much better than everyone who goes up against her. And yeah, it’s an unfair advantage, but fuck it, if she loses, she dies. Fair fighting is not exactly a priority.  
  
It’s been quite an eventful few days. She’s been dragged from one cell to another more times than she can count, and she’s taken down four more superbitches and lived to tell the tale.  
  
The first was the hardest, a short redhead who fired these insane energy beams from her hands. They ricocheted off the walls, and Paige had to play dead until the damn things stopped bouncing. Still, it wasn’t hard- all she had to do was wait for the bitch to turn her back and go for the ladder, and then it was easy.  
  
After that, the second was child’s play: she apparently had some kind of telepathy, allowing her to predict everyone else’s movements. Of course, that didn’t really mean anything when she couldn’t run that fast or throw anything resembling a halfway-decent punch, especially when she had five pissed-off women cornering her (inasmuch as they could corner anyone in a circular arena).  
  
Of course, Paige did have to get through everyone else in the damn arena, but it was better than the energy bitch.  
  
She wonders if she’s doing something wrong as she works out, doing push-ups on the floor in between beds. She had to shove them aside to make enough room, but there’s nobody else in this cell, so there’s no one to object.  
  
It’s kind of disturbing, she thinks. Like, yeah, OK, she did blow up a building full of people, but they all had it coming. But now she’s killing people just to survive, and-  
  
“Well, what the fuck else am I gonna do?” she asks herself. “It’s them or me. No choice.”  
  
Maybe that’s the problem, she muses. Maybe it’s the lack of choice that’s got her feeling so bad. Her feelings want her to do something other than kill them, but then the only option is to _be_ killed, and nobody ever accused feelings of being logical.  
  
Of course, her feelings only turn up after the fact. When she’s in the arena, she’ll do anything and everything to win.  
  
She did exactly that with the third, a skinny brunette who teleported around the arena fast enough to make it impossible to hold onto her. Rather than try to attack, Paige stood back and watched as she teleported away just as people were about to grab her, made her opponents run into the wall by teleporting away at the last second, and let one woman grab her, teleported five metres into the air, let go and teleported back to the ground. Difficult, admittedly, but not impossible. Paige just waited until the woman had her back turned, grabbed her arm, pulled her around and punched her in the nose before she could teleport away. The shock and pain was enough of a distraction for Paige to hit her again, and after that it really didn’t take much time or effort to win.  
  
The fourth one was just nasty, though. Paige still doesn’t know what the fuck it was that she could do, but she does know that it obviously involved putting people through whole lot of pain, given how much they screamed. She’d grab some poor unlucky bastard and do her thing, and somehow they’d die from it. Effective- she had everyone else in the arena running away nearly instantly- but with a major flaw: she was too distracted to keep an eye on her surroundings, so it wasn’t hard for Paige to get behind her and break her neck.  
  
With that done, the guards threw her into yet another fucking cell, and with fuck all else to do, Paige divides her time between resting and working out, all the while waiting for the next time they’ll try to kill her.  
  
And waiting for the first chance she gets to escape.

There’s a sound like footsteps from nearby, and Paige looks up, only to see yet another group of guards.

“Oh, great. Here we fucking go again.”

  
  
  
The ceiling has never been so fascinating.  
  
In truth, it’s bland grey in colour and has no interesting features, but to AJ’s eyes it’s a swirl of different colours and patterns, changing from second to second like she’s looking into a kaleidoscope.

She can feel a tiny army marching up her left arm, thousands and thousands of feet making her arm itch like hell. Annoyed, she summons a tiny fireball from her right index finger and flicks it at her arm. The fireball bounces once and lands on the sheets, leaving a scorched hole and setting them on fire.  
  
AJ giggles. “Oops.”  
  
Lazily, she flicks her fingers and the fire goes out, leaving a fair bit of smoke and the ruined sheets. She’s done that a few times by accident. Once she couldn’t stop the fire, and there was nothing left in the cell except her by the time they put it out. But she was OK. She’s always OK. Fire is her friend now.  
  
It’s been an intriguing while for her- not that she knows how long it’s been. She often passes out during the day and wakes up during the day, and without a clock she has no way of knowing whether she slept for an hour or three days. Not that she minds. Most of the time she’s too preoccupied with watching the colours, whether it’s the ceiling, the walls or the fire.  
  
It took her a long while to get the fire figured out. The first time she woke up after the arena, she was stuck in bed, her hands and foot still bandaged. She slept for most of the time, only waking up when the doctors came in to feed her or take her away for more tests. After a while, they took the bandages off her hands, and then things got _fun._  
  
She likes her hands. They each have a long, thin scar running across her palm from her wrist to her fingers, and if she looks hard enough, she can see shining fire inside them.  
  
They hurt a lot when the bandages came off, especially if she flexed them, so she doesn’t do that now. But she figured out how to make the fire again. It took a lot of thought, but she did it, and now she can make it whenever she wants.  
  
She holds her hand up thoughtfully and summons the fire. It curls around her hand, covering every inch of her skin, making it look like she’s wearing a fiery glove.  
  
It feels like warm showers and hot chocolate, like electric blankets and sunlight. Like sleeping in on cold days, like drinking hot soup. It’s _beautiful._  
  
What isn’t beautiful is the clatter of metal as the guards unlock her cell door and haul it open.  
  
AJ doesn’t like the guards, and they don’t like her. Their hands always hold her so tightly; they drag her along and ignore how they’re hurting her, and she knows they’re doing it on purpose.  
  
It was an accident. It really was an accident. One day the guards came to get her while she was practicing with her fire, and a bit of it went astray and hit one of the guards in the head. He looked like a candle, so much so that AJ couldn’t stop laughing, even when she was covering her ears against his screaming. But he stopped doing it after a while, so it didn’t really matter.  
  
It matters to the guards, though. They never come to see her now without a fire extinguisher, and one of them keeps it pointed at her as they haul her through the corridors. It’s… bad. She can’t remember the word, but it’s something bad.

AJ doesn’t do anything to make them scream now. She just watches the colours. And least her ankle’s fully healed now. She didn’t like it when they took her places before. They never cared when they hurt her, even when it was her injured foot, even when they made her scream from the agony.  
  
They drag her into the arena and drop her to her knees, but she can’t balance, her legs giving way, and she pitches forward and hits the floor face first. The icy cold of the concrete punches through the haze that surrounds her brain and hits her hard, hard enough that she cries out and rolls onto her side, her hands going to her face.  
  
Someone says something harsh, and a warm hand lands on AJ’s shoulder, pulling her up so she’s sitting. Whoever’s holding her pulls her hands away from her face, and AJ sees the kind doctor, who smiles at her.  
  
She likes him. He’s the only one who’s nice to her.  
  
“Hey there,” he says, his voice smooth and soft. “How are you feeling?”  
  
AJ tries to think of the words, fails, and has to resort to the simpler version. “It _hurts._ ”  
  
He pats her shoulder softly. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll try to get them to be… less harsh.”  
  
AJ nods along, unsure of what else to do, and he smiles a little.  
  
“We’ve got something for you to do, if you can,” he says slowly.  
  
AJ nods again, her eyes wide.  
  
“You remember that time you broke your ankle?” he asks.  
  
She winces and nods.  
  
“We have another group we want you to kill,” he explains. “They’re down there.”  
  
AJ doesn’t want to walk to the edge for fear someone will use the fire extinguisher on her, but she can see the ladder. “Do I have to break my ankle again?”  
  
“No, no!” he exclaims. “You don’t have to break anything. That was an accident, and we’re hoping it won’t be repeated. For now, we’ve figured something out for you.”  
  
He points to something she didn’t see before, a small platform sitting next to the top of the ladder, and AJ tilts her head, intrigued.  
  
“Do you want to try it out?” he asks, and she nods.  
  
He helps her up and leads her across the upper gallery to where the platform is, and helps her sit down. Then without warning, the platform starts to descend, and AJ squeaks and nearly falls off.  
  
She manages to grab the edge, though, staying on as the ground slowly gets closer until it’s right there, waiting for her.  
  
She summons all her courage and manages to scramble off the edge and onto the arena floor. It’s cold too, but she can ignore that as long as she stays upright.  
  
She straightens up and looks at the other women. They’re another assorted crowd, no two looking alike. Some of them look confused. Others look shocked. Some look appalled.  
  
AJ sighs. She doesn’t get why people always seem so upset when she’s around. It’s weird.

Still, she thinks, at least this shouldn’t take long. It won’t be hard.

 

  
  
Paige slips to the back of the crowd, ignoring the women around her exchanging confused words and questions, and presses herself against the wall, wary. There’s something not right about this one. Something’s definitely off. She just hasn’t worked out what it is.  
  
She gets it a couple of minutes later, when she looks up and sees the odd platform… thing… next to the ladder.  
  
_What the hell?_ she thinks. _What the fuck is that for?_  
  
She brainstorms for a minute. Maybe it’s for someone disabled, who can’t climb down. But why would they drag someone disabled into this… whatever it is?  
  
She gets her answer a few minutes later. Someone cries out from the gallery- someone young and female.  
  
Paige blinks. _Are they_ torturing _someone up there?_  
  
Fuck, maybe today’s superbitch doesn’t want to get involved. Maybe they have to slap her around before she’ll agree to it.  
  
Somehow that makes Paige feel even more uncomfortable. _Them or me_ was bad enough, but the possibility that today’s aggressor doesn’t even want to kill anyone just makes things worse.

Her inner turmoil then turns to incredulity when someone above gets on the platform and manages to nearly fall off within a few seconds. _The fuck?_  
  
She gets her answer when it finally reaches the floor: today’s superbitch is a tiny girl who looks like she’s barely seventeen, if that, and she gets off the platform slowly, moving like she can barely control her arms and legs.  
  
_They got a_ kid _to do this?_  
  
Sure, Paige isn’t that old herself, but Christ, there has to be _some_ kind of limit.  
  
Adam would fucking _freak_ if he knew about this, she thinks. If she ever gets out, she’ll have to tell him. Then he can shoot all these fucking doctors and guards and let whatever God they believe in sort them out.  
  
The kid scrambles to her feet, and Paige blinks, confused. She seems unstable, swaying as she looks at the crowd, tripping over her feet. She doesn’t even seem able to stand still. Drunk? Drugged? Some kind of physical condition? Or did they _do_ something to her?  
  
Fuck. This is gonna royally suck. It’s one thing to take out an older woman who plans to brutally kill you, but it’s a whole other thing to take out a tiny kid who can’t even stand upright without nearly falling over.  
  
However, most of Paige’s sympathy vanishes when the doctor finishes giving his speech and the kid flicks her fingers and sends a fireball flying at the nearest woman, who can’t dodge in time.  
  
“Oh, _fuck me,_ ” Paige whispers.  
  
The fireball devours the woman’s head in seconds and quickly moves on to the rest of her, and the kid falls on her arse and laughs like a hyena, drinking in the sight.  
  
_Yep,_ Paige thinks, deliberately shoving her horror and disgust at the sight to the back of her mind. _Definitely insane._ Still, it makes it easier. Now she’s putting the kid out of her misery- and everyone else’s, too.

Well. Maybe it’ll make it easier, but only in the sense of justifying it- and Paige knows that’ll wear off soon enough. It sure as hell won’t make killing her easier to live with.  
  
It might take a while, though, because the kid lets off more fireballs, each hitting someone and taking them down. And nobody seems to know what to do: huddle together and hope for the best? Run and find out first-hand if the kid can hit a moving target? Or just wait for someone else to try something?  
  
In the end, a few go for the second and third options: three women break away from the others and run. The kid doesn’t notice them- or at least, it seems that way until she puts her hands together and summons what looks like a rope made of fire. She twists it a little and throws it at the nearest runner, who screams and freezes as the rope- no, the _lasso_ \- lands around her neck and tightens.  
  
Everyone seems to freeze, staring at the woman as blue and white flames curl around her neck.  
  
The kid waves a hand carelessly, and the rope vanishes, leaving the woman’s head to fall to the ground, severed and burned, the skin turned coal-black and flaking off.  
  
There’s a retching noise behind Paige as someone throws up, and Paige realises dimly that she just followed suit.  
  
_OK,_ she thinks, wiping her mouth and straightening up, ignoring the mess. _Think, Paige, think. This isn’t impossible, it’s just hard. It’s… wait._  
  
Another woman, her eyes determined, looks from the cluster of terrified victims-to-be to the giggling kid. Then she charges across the room, covering the huge space in a few strides, bearing down on the kid like she’s about to throw a spear or something.  
  
The kid just looks up at her calmly and moves her hand slightly. A second later, fire leaps from her fingers and engulfs her would-be killer, turning her into a tower of flame.  
  
_So much for that idea,_ Paige thinks.  
  
Unexpectedly, however, the kid doesn’t make a move after that, doesn’t try to get up or shoot more fireballs. Instead, she stares up at the ceiling, like she’s forgotten where she is.  
  
Another trio of women exchange glances and charge toward her, but the kid kills them all in seconds, barely looking their way.  
  
Paige cracks her knuckles and takes a deep breath. _Fuck this. I’m not gonna get killed,_ she thinks. _Not now. I’ll make it back._  
  
Then it hits her: how many of the other women are thinking the exact same thing?  
  
She freezes to the spot, and it saves her life.  
  
The kid lets a wave of fire loose that looks like it came out of a video game, and the reactions vary: some women run to the left or right, even though the wave spreads to cover the entire arena. Others run forward and try to jump over it. And a few seem to be frozen like Paige, only unfreezing when they burn.  
  
Paige manages to break free of her frozen horror, but with only seconds to act, she drops to a crouch and wraps her arms around her head, and a second later, something slams her into the wall as screams fill the air. Something else- several somethings, in fact- land heavily and painfully on top of her, and it takes a lot of effort to stop herself from shoving them away, especially since she’s got a pretty good idea of just what’s going on. Seconds later, the air becomes so hot it’s like she’s just opened the door of an oven at full blast, and Paige bites back a scream as the heat sears her skin. 

She can hear more screams, and as the heat dies away, she makes herself wait, though her skin is crawling and she can’t stop trembling with nervous energy. She knows she needs to stay still, but her barely-constrained horror at what she thinks is happening, combined with her need to know what’s going on is making staying still incredibly difficult.

The seconds feel like hours, each one taking forever to pass as her pulse hammers in her ears. She forces herself to stay calm, counting the seconds in whispers, and once a minute’s finally passed, she moves her hands away from her face and makes herself open her eyes.

Barely a few inches away, a pair of glassy, vacant eyes are staring back at her, and Paige bites a scream back so hard she tastes blood.

It was bad enough thinking it might be true, but _knowing_ it’s true is so much worse.

Paige forces herself to relax against the wall and takes a deep breath to steady herself, but that just makes it worse: all she can smell is the scent of cooked meat, and the fact that it actually smells good nearly makes her throw up again.

She can’t stand it any more: she has to get out.

Someone screams from a way away, and Paige steels herself and shoves the bodies off her.

Over at the other side of the arena, the kid is standing in front of the last few remaining women, squinting down at a still-twitching body. She seems confused, or maybe forgetful, like she doesn’t remember what to do anymore.

It’s a good time to act, but that doesn’t matter now. Just the thought of remaining where she is makes her want to scream and claw her skin off where the bodies touched her, so she casts caution to the wind and rises, twitching and shuddering like she’s had far too much caffeine, inhaling air that’s thick with smoke.

  
The kid doesn’t even notice her- as Paige moves up behind her, she seems to remember what she’s meant to be doing and takes out the few survivors with a wave of her hands. Then she turns, and Paige punches her right between the eyes, sending her falling to the floor. Her head hits the concrete and she’s out like a light.  
  
Paige falls to her knees, breathing in the smoky air, coughing a little, her eyes streaming, but fuck it, she _made it._  
  
Jesus. Was it even worth it, after all that?  
  
A minute later, she gets back to her feet, walks over to the kid and-  
  
“Stop,” someone calls from above.  
  
Paige looks up, confused. “Huh?”  
  
“Don’t touch her,” one of the doctors says, “or you die.”  
  
“The fuck are you talking about?” Paige calls back. “Only one of us makes it out. That’s the fucking deal! I beat her, so I have to kill her!”  
  
He shakes his head. “Not in this case.”  
  
Paige stares at him incredulously. “What, so you’re gonna kill me even though I won? Fuck you!”  
  
“Actually,” he says, “no. You won. But you don’t get to kill her.”  
  
Paige looks down at the kid. “So what makes her so fucking special, huh?”

“Why do you imagine I’d tell you anything?” the doctor asks blandly.  
  
Paige looks down at the kid and really looks at her for the first time. Tiny, young, Latina, damn cute… oh, Jesus.  
  
“Oh, fuck, you’re not fucking her, are you?” she calls up. A second later, she realises just how stupid that was, but Christ, not only does the kid look like she could easily be too young to consent, from the way she’s acting she doesn’t seem coherent enough to put a sentence together, let alone really understand what she’d be consenting _to_. And she can’t see why else they’d break the rules to save her.  
  
He doesn’t reply, so Paige risks another question. “Now what?”  
  
“Now you climb the ladder and go back to your cell,” he says, and she can hear a hint of anger in his tone.  
  
Yeah, she wouldn’t be surprised if he shot her anyway, but fuck, it’s not like she has another choice.  
  
She climbs the ladder slowly and looks the fucker in the eye once she gets to the top. He’s tall, fair-haired, kinda good-looking, and she can easily imagine him taking advantage of some poor crazy kid who wouldn’t know how to say no.  
  
As much as she’d like to punch him, she simply turns her back and walks away, though she’d swear that she can feel a laser dot between her shoulders all the way back to her cell.

  
  
  
  
_“I like your alternative, but you’re going to need to alter it a little. Tango nearly fell off because you didn’t warn her.”_  
  
_“I know. It was my mistake. I’ll make sure we tell her next time.”_

_“How is she?”_

_“Bryan says she seems OK. Once she wakes up they’ll check her again.”_

_“So what are we calling the other one?”_

_“Fay says Foxtrot’s the only open name right now.”_

_“Subject Foxtrot it is. What are we gonna do with her? She’s not powered.”_

_“No, but she’s taken down enough of our powered subjects that Rich thinks she’d be a good test for them. You know, we mix up something we think can work, throw the result at Foxtrot and see what happens.”_

_“I don’t think that would work, though.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“Well, see, I went back and reviewed the videos of Foxtrot’s previous tests.”_

_“And?”_  
  
_“Sure, she’s taken down six powered subjects. The thing is, she hasn’t really done anything other than run and dodge and wait until they’ve got their guards down. If she somehow shook off their powers or something like that she’d be notable, but she hasn’t done anything that someone else who’s just as fit and as skilled at hand-to-hand fighting could do. You get me?”_

_“I get you.”_

_“And of course, the problem is that all we can learn from Foxtrot’s tests is that our subjects are either too slow, too unprepared, or too unobservant. And since she killed them all, none of them can learn from it.”_  
  
_“Except Tango.”_  
  
_“True, except Tango.”_  
  
_“So what if…”_

 _“We pit Tango up against Foxtrot again some time and see if Tango learned anything?”_  
  
_“Honestly, I’m not sure if Tango_ can _learn anything, given how much shit she’s on.”_

 _“Then decrease the dose.”_  
  
_“Ahem. What if Tango actually ends up understanding and comprehending what’s happened to her? Do_ you _want a basket case who can throw fireballs running around?”_  
  
_“No. No, I don’t. Good point. We’ll have to think of something else.”_  
  
_“As for Foxtrot…”_  
  
_“As for Foxtrot, I think we’ll pit her up against some more…_ creative _opponents until Tango recovers. And_ you _are not allowed anywhere near her.”_  
  
_“Me?”_  
  
_“Yeah, you. I get that you’re pissed off about what she said, but Foxtrot has a lot of potential, and if you fuck her up…”_  
  
_“I_ get _it.”_  
  
_“Also, you might want to stop getting so friendly with Tango.”_  
  
_“I am_ not _fucking her.”_  
  
_“Look, I know that, and you know that, but now the entire compound has heard what Foxtrot said, and at least some of them have assumed that if it’s that obvious, it must be true.”_  
  
_“Fine, I’ll stop being so friendly with Tango. Even though we’ve developed a good rapport, and even though making sure she continues to trust me is a high priority, and even though there’s_ extensive _security camera footage that shows that I haven’t done anything remotely inappropriate…”_

_“I know. Give it time; the idiots who spread this shit around will find something new to talk about, they always do. Go check on November, would you? I think she’s out of surgery now.”_

_“Got it.”_  


  
AJ awakens to a field of white: white walls, white floor, white ceiling, white sheets. The only non-white thing she can see is the grey door.  
  
She slumps back against the sheets, humming tunelessly and waiting for something to happen. Unlike last time, her hands and feet seem OK. She can’t remember how the fight ended, though. But that’s all right. She can just curl up and sleep again.  
  
A while later, she’s jolted out of the dream by the thud as the door shuts. She blinks, rubs her eyes and focuses a little, and she can’t help but smile when she sees the kind doctor.  
  
“How are you feeling?” he asks, and his movements seem tense, his voice a little cold. AJ shrinks back a little, wondering if she did something wrong, and her words disappear for a short while.  
  
“Fine,” she manages, and she turns away, staring at the wall where a huge blue spiral turns to black and then to light red in seconds.  
  
“Does your head hurt?” he asks, and AJ shakes her head experimentally. There’s no pain at all, and she likes that.  
  
“Good,” he says flatly. “What about your memory?”  
  
“I killed them,” AJ mumbles. “Like you asked. But then I don’t remember. Is that wrong?”  
  
“No,” he says finally. “That’s all right. One of them managed to overpower you.”  
  
“Oh,” AJ says blankly. She casts her mind around for a response and goes with the first she can think of. “Is that bad?”  
  
“It’s bad,” he admits. “But it’s OK. See, sooner or later the two of you are going to fight again. We want to see who can win.”  
  
“So I didn’t screw up?” AJ asks, hoping to see him smile, or relax, or be something other than aloof and cold.  
  
“You screwed up,” he admits, and AJ’s heart sinks. “But it’s OK. It’s not the end of the world. You can make it right.”  
  
AJ nods vigorously. “I will,” she promises him.  
  
He smiles, just a little, and she smiles back, a little nervous. “Then I guess I’ll leave you to it,” he says. His hand lands on her shoulder and squeezes it comfortingly, and then he walks out.  
  
AJ lies back in her bed, stares up at the ceiling and watches as stars burst across its white surface, unsure of how she should be feeling.  


 

 

As soon as the door closes, Paige bolts into the bathroom and throws up helplessly. Once she’s done, she turns the shower on at full blast and scrubs herself until she bleeds.

It doesn’t make her feel any cleaner, though.

Instead, she dries off, pulls on fresh clothes, flops down on her bed and starts thinking.  
  
She nearly died. She could easily have died. If the kid had been a bit more thorough, in all likelihood Paige would be dead.  
  
_It can’t happen again._  
  
She won’t make it out if she keeps fucking up like this. No, she has to be smarter. Be more focused. Be more _careful._

She only survived because of sheer luck. That _won’t_ happen again.

  
  
  
She knows for sure that something’s up when the next time she gets dragged into the arena, there’s only one other woman there.  
  
It's confusing, and she's not sure what to expect, but as soon as the arsehole in charge gives the go-ahead, all expectations fly out the window: the world turns as black as if she got thrown into a vat of ink, and everything she could hear is replaced with a silence so thorough it’s deafening.  
  
Unbalanced and terrified, Paige takes a step and falls to the ground, frantically trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. At least she can still feel the floor.  
  
_Think, God fucking damn it!_  
  
She scrambles backwards until she hits the wall, and she barely escapes accidentally bashing her head against it. But she’s running out of options, so all she can do is wait until a hand grabs her arm, and Paige _freaks._  
  
Without sight or sound, she’s running on instinct, but she can still feel it when she throws a punch and connects. Her would-be killer is taken by surprise, and it isn’t long before Paige has thrown her to the ground and straddled her, both hands gripping her neck so hard her hands are like iron.  
  
She only knows she’s succeeded when her sight and hearing come back in a sudden rush, and then she falls to the ground, nearly sobbing with relief.  
  
Not one of the more fun tests, that one. But it’s still better than being at the bottom of a pile of corpses.  


 

 _“So, would anyone care to tell me what we learned from that?”_  

_“I’d say ‘Don’t piss off Foxtrot' would be pretty high on the list.”_

_“Apart from the complete fucking obvious, thanks.”_

_“Well, I can see something we’ve missed.”_

_“And what would that be?”_

_“We haven’t put Foxtrot up against anyone who can actually fight. So far she’s only been up against subjects who were only using their powers. So what do you think would happen if we put Foxtrot up against, say, Golf?”_  
  
_“Oh, I like that idea. Can we do it, though?”_

_“Absolutely. Golf’s booked for some more tests, but I think I can squeeze Foxtrot in soon.”_

_“Good. Make it so.”_  


 

 

_“Oh, Bryan?”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“I have an idea about Tango.”_

_“Yeah, what?”_

_“We’ve been putting Foxtrot up against powered subjects to see what would happen. Why don’t we put Tango up against some of our powered subjects?”_

_“Like who?”_

_“The disposable ones.”_

_“Such as…”_

_“Charlie, Uniform and Juliet.”_

_“I thought we still had plans for Uniform?”_

_“Scrapped. Some idiot fucked up the dose.”_

_“Oh. OK, I’ll ask Fay if she’ll arrange it.”_

 

 

  
  
The day after she lost, AJ’s interrupted from her course of amateur astronomy by another team of guards, who haul her back into the arena and set her up against another group of women.  
  
It’s a smaller group, though, and that intrigues her. She doesn’t know why, but she’s sure she can have fun with them.  
  
They make it hard for her, though. The moment the doctor tells them to go, one of them turns invisible, the second grows until she’s ten feet tall and the third starts shining so brightly it hurts AJ’s eyes to look at her.  
  
AJ’s fascinated by the odd trio, so much so that she just wants to watch them all day. But she can’t. Instead, she has to kill them. So she sighs and sends a wave of white-hot fire running over the floor.  
  
That works.  
  
There’s a sudden scream of pain and panic from the empty air to AJ’s left, so AJ makes a nice big fireball and throws it in the direction of the sound. It doesn’t connect, but that’s all right. She just makes another wave and fires it.  
  
Actually, that gives her an idea.  
  
She thinks for a second, ignoring the screaming, and focuses. She gets distracted a couple of times, but she thinks she’s figured it out.  
  
The ten feet tall giant is stomping her way across the arena, but AJ doesn’t panic. Instead, she opens her mouth and exhales fire into the woman’s right leg.  
  
That works, to say the least.  
  
AJ loves fire now. She was a little scared of it before, but now she knows it’s beautiful. Fire won’t hurt her. Fire loves her.  
  
So she sits and stares and watches the fire until an invisible hand grabs her hard enough to bruise, and then she screams and her arm bursts into flames.  
  
It’s kind of hard to stay invisible when you’re on fire, to be fair.  
  
That only leaves the shining woman, but she’s not hard. Not when she’s that visible.  
  
AJ heads back to her cell with the sense of a job well done, and dreams of a fire that never goes out.  


  
  
_“How are we doing, Liza?”_  
  
_“On the one hand, Tango’s certainly overcoming the obstacles we’re throwing at her. On the other hand, I think we’re a little stuck right now.”_  
  
_“Oh?”_  
  
_“We threw three of our disposable subjects at her and she killed them. OK, fine. The problem here is that I think to really see how good she is, we’d need to throw her someone who’s a lot more powerful. However, we can’t afford to lose anyone who fits that description, nor can we afford to lose Tango.”_  
  
_“Oh. Shit. I get you.”_

_“Kyra’s still working on Foxtrot, but we want to give them both a little more time before round two.”_

_“OK, so you need someone powerful enough to give Tango a challenge but not so powerful that we can’t afford to lose them. Hmmm.”_

_“You see the problem.”_

_“What about Bravo?”_

_“Bravo? You mean the…_ oh. _Fuck, why didn’t I think of that?”_

 _“Probably because Bravo was a mistake. But she’s a mistake that might just_ work _.”_

 _“I’ll get it arranged immediately.”_  
  


  
Paige’s next test comes two days later, when she finds herself in the ring with someone who looks like a Valkyrie and screams like she’s in a metal band.  
  
Also, she can fly.  
  
Paige is awestruck to the point that she just watches as her opponent soars into the air, and while she knows she shouldn’t get friendly with people she’s supposed to be killing, she can’t resist calling out “I have to admit, that’s pretty fucking awesome.”  
  
Her opponent grins and calls back, “I know, right?”  
  
With the overtures done, Paige soon finds herself in the fight of her life: unlike every other opponent she’s faced before, the Valkyrie actually knows how to fight, and she dodges Paige’s attacks by simply jumping into the air and flying off.  
  
It doesn’t take Paige long to come up with a plan, though: she dodges a punch and manages to get in one good hit to the Valkyrie’s nose. And few can really focus with a broken, bloody nose.  
  
Still, it’s a lot easier to fly off than it is to keep fighting… well, Paige guesses… but it’s a lot harder to fly when you can’t focus, especially when Paige grabs her leg and pulls hard.  
  
The Valkyrie puts up a heroic fight, but Paige finally manages to triumph in the end, though she winds up with some damn impressive bruises in the process.  
  
She’s starting to wonder if there’s a point to any of this, or if they just want to see how many of their guys it’ll take before one of them finally kills her.  


  
AJ’s pretty much running on autopilot now.

All right, maybe she’s getting a little complacent.  
  
Well, it’s not like any of them have actually offered her a real challenge.  
  
So when she finds herself facing a tall, thin, scared-looking girl who looks like she’ll run if someone looks at her too sternly, she just sighs and summons a nice big ball of golden fire.  
  
A second later, a wall of water smashes into her, throwing her backwards and into the floor, hard.

  
Another follows it a second later, and AJ shrieks, feeling the water crawling over her skin, her body shaking and seizing, and then the cold hits her, sinking into her bones, squirming into her soul, and she’s freezing from the inside out-

AJ screams.

  
Heat rises from her skin like smoke, making the air waver and shimmer. The water evaporates and is replaced by fire, waves of fire that dance over her body before settling, forming a suit of armour that flickers from scarlet to gold to white to orange and back again by the second. 

AJ’s body continues to seize and spasm, and it takes a while for her to come back to herself. When she does, she lifts a hand to her face, confused, only to realise two things: first, she can’t feel a thing, and second, her body is still on fire.

She looks around and sees her opponent. Or, rather, the place where her opponent must be. A wall of water is hiding one small part of the arena from her view, and AJ manages to get to her feet, though she has to use the wall as support.  
  
It takes her a while to cross the arena, taking slow, uncertain steps, placing one foot in front of the other even as she shakes and trembles, tiny flames falling from her body.  
  
She’s nearly there when a wave of dizziness hits her, filling her head with static, making her sway even more until she stumbles and barely manages to keep herself from falling.  
  
She can’t fuck it up. Not now. She’s so close…  
  
It only occurs to her when she’s almost at the wall of water that she doesn’t have a clue what to do next.  
  
Well, there’s always good old-fashioned making shit up.  
  
AJ takes another step and reaches out to touch the wall, but the water disappears in clouds of steam, making her blink and cough a little on reflex. More steam flows around her, and AJ takes a step back, rubbing her eyes.  
  
The steam clears enough that she can actually see, and AJ tilts her head curiously, staring up at her enemy. The other girl is pressed against the wall, her hands covering her face, her skin a shade of pink that’s almost red, her body shaking with silent sobs.  
  
Long seconds pass as neither moves, until the other girl sags, having seemingly accepted her defeat, and straightens up.  
  
AJ just stares at her, remembering the disgusting feeling of the water freezing her from the inside, and lets loose.  


  
  
_“Conclusions?”_  
  
_“Interesting. I wonder which did it- Tango’s appearance, or her reaction to the water?”_  
  
_“How do you mean, her appearance?”_  
  
_“Well, from the replays, I’d say it looks like Bravo didn’t want to attack first because she didn’t want to hurt a ‘defenceless little girl’ like Tango. It’s interesting, how that’s worked in Tango’s favour so far. I don’t suppose any of you happen to know exactly how old she is?”_  
  
_“I don’t have the exact age, but apparently she’s in her late twenties.”_

_"You're kidding.”_

_“Nope. I know, she really doesn’t look it.”_  
  
_“Well, we have other things to consider now.”_  
  
_“Like?”_  
  
_“I’ve been informed that tomorrow is when Tango and Foxtrot will have their rematch.”_

_“Well, tango and foxtrot are all right, but I always preferred the salsa…”_

_“…go. Get out. Now.”_  
  
_“Oh, come on.”_

 _“No. Just… just no.”_

_“It was pretty funny, you have to admit it.”_

_“No. It was not. Go check on Tango. We had to dose her again, and I’m worried that we gave her too much.”_

  
  
  
Paige is pretty sure she knows the answer to her previous question when she gets into the arena and sees the firebitch there.  
  
This is it, then.  
  
She walks toward the other side of the arena and stops just short of the wall. She turns around, inhales deeply and pushes her hair away from her face, trying to force herself to calm down even as her heart hammers in her chest.  
  
There’s no doubt in her mind that this is their revenge. She barely survived the first time, and that was with a full arena.  
  
One on one? She’s got no chance.  
  
Paige closes her eyes and tilts her head back, swallowing hard.  
  
_I’m sorry, Solomon_ , she thinks. _I was so stupid, and I never should have said it…_  
  
Firebitch tilts her head, looking confused, and Paige’s pulse thunders in her ears.  
  
_I love you, Sol,_ she thinks.  
  
“I’ve seen you before,” Firebitch says. “Haven’t I?”  
  
Paige manages a nod.  
  
“I don’t…” Firebitch says, confused. “When did… who are you?”  
  
“I’m the one who _beat_ you,” Paige says without thinking, and then she bites back a curse. _Great one, Paige. Now you’ve pissed her off._  
  
“You beat me?” Firebitch asks. She looks completely mystified, like she can’t even understand the concept.  
  
“Oh, for… how fucking high _are_ you? Do you even know where you are? What you’ve been _doing?_ ”  
  
Firebitch stares down at her hands. “I’m… I’m helping. He said…”  
  
Paige has no idea who the hell she’s talking about, but whoever the guy in question is, he’s a fucker.  
  
Adam would freak the fuck out if he… huh.  
  
_Fuck,_ Paige thinks, stunned.  
  
Adam would definitely freak out if he knew what was going on. But he’d _really_ freak out if he knew that she was just standing there, waiting to die.  
  
_What the fuck is wrong with me?_ _Why am I just standing here?_  
  
She’s about to move when it hits her: she can’t wing this one. She needs a plan, and she’s only got a few seconds to make one.  
  
Firebitch seems unwilling to make the first move, though- or maybe she’s just too doped up to feel inclined to. Paige doesn’t really care- either way, it’s bought her some time.  
  
It’s also given her an idea.  
  
“Is that him?” she calls, motioning toward the top of the ladder. Firebitch turns to look, and Paige charges.  
  
On the plus side, it actually works. On the minus side, it doesn’t work for long: Firebitch whirls around and throws a fireball, and Paige barely manages to leap out of the way in time.  
  
But she doesn’t balk. Instead, she keeps running, keeps dodging, and manages to keep herself from pausing when she doesn’t quite dodge enough and the fire scorches the left side of her face.  
  
Either Firebitch is too arrogant to adapt, or she just can’t comprehend the danger she’s in: Paige is obviously going for the kill, but she doesn’t move- she just keeps throwing more fire.  
  
But it’s not working, and she evidently realises that, because instead of throwing another fireball, she gestures downwards and a wave of fire begins to cross the concrete.  
  
Paige bites back a curse and keeps going. With no other option left, she leaps up and over, screaming as the heat bites into her legs, and crashes into Firebitch, knocking them both to the floor.  
  
Firebitch lets out a startled scream, but she doesn’t summon any fire. Maybe she can’t. Instead, she starts thrashing, trying to push Paige off her, but Paige’s hands lock into place around her neck, squeezing as hard as she can. The world slows and shrinks until it’s just the two of them, and Paige is focusing so hard on her struggling, gasping enemy that she only realises that she can’t breathe when the world starts to fade out.

Everything vanishes, her anger and determination and despair and horror, only to be replaced with an icy numbness that keeps her from reacting. Paige stares down at her enemy’s face, the only thing she can see now, and while they both succumb to each other’s grip, they don’t falter for a second.

In fact, it’s almost comforting, Paige thinks as what's left of her world slowly disappears. Going out fighting, taking the fucker with her… it’s not exactly a perfect death, but it’s a pretty good one. She can't say she's got no regrets, but in the end- 

 

  
  
_Emma pauses._

 _She hates this, fucking_ hates _it. She’s been running for God knows how long now, always through the same fucking corridors, past the same locked doors, always being pursued by the fucking guards. She can’t stop or they’ll get her, and when they do it’s always followed by what seems like hours of unceasing agony. She’s managed to keep escaping their clutches, but there’s just no_ point _. She doesn’t have the keys, she can’t get them, she can’t make anyone let her out, and she just doesn’t know what else she can_ do.  
  
_Hearing the footsteps behind her, she starts to walk, taking long breaths and wincing at the pain in her bleeding feet. She turns left, down another endless corridor, and focuses on the footsteps, trying to gauge how close they are._

_All that goes out the window when she sees the door._

_The light around its doorknob is green. All the other lights are red._

_At first she thinks it’s a trap, some new scheme they’ve come up with. But that makes no sense- they’ve got her right where they want her, and while they’re obviously having fun with their cat and mouse game, they break it off whenever they want and catch her in no time._

_The footsteps get closer as Emma debates it, and finally she bolts to the door, almost eager._

_Fuck it. What does she have to lose?_

_The doorknob turns smoothly, the door swings open, and Emma steps forward into the bright sunlight, feeling the fresh air on her face for the first time in what feels like years._  
  
  



End file.
